Talk:Bel and the Dragon

Rescuing an orphan
Instead of bashing away in the edit summary, why not discuss your differences on the talk page? That is what it is for. To have all those warning headers in the article without corresponding discussion on the talk page seems inefficient, not to mention discourteous to readers. Start research here: http://www.google.com/search?q=Bel+Dragon+Daniel&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 Ortolan88 01:19, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

orthodox
its not in the protestant bible but it is in my copy of the greek orthodox bible. is it in the accepted jewish books? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.139.45.124 (talk) 13:11, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Why the {} sign/s?
Why were one or more of these sign/s: signs placed on this page without any discussion, explanation or reasoning? (And why create a redundant category Category:Bible stories that is now up for a vote for deletion at Categories for deletion?) IZAK 06:48, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Check the User contributions of User:CheeseDreams. This is just one of a long series of articles that has been labelled. --Wetman 06:51, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * User:MishaPan's "qualifiction of the phrase "not found in Protestant Bibles" to "not found in modern Protestant Bibles" is intended to give the impression that this narrative is found in older Protestant bibles. A footnote giving the edition where this narrative is given, other than in Apocrypha needless to say, will be needed here. I have started the Notes section to make it simple. --Wetman 22:48, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Jews?
I couldn't help but notice that this page contains an extensive discussion of various Christians' opinions on the book's canonicity. Shouldn't there be some discussion of Jews' opinions as well? I mean, after all...they wrote it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.9.56.131 (talk) 14:57, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Unlike in Christendom, I don't think there's ever been a debate among Jewish people. It was included in the Septuagint, but was never considered to be canonical by Jewish believers at any point in time. --B (talk) 22:07, 21 January 2008 (UTC

If it's in the Septuagint it's a little foolish to suggest that it was 'never considered to be canonical by Jewish believers'. A biblical canon is simply a list of sacred books and obviously the collection of writings contained in the LXX preceded Christianity and was used by 'Jewish believers'. If you're talking about he current canon of the Hebrew Bible, this was not finalized until centuries after the production of the Septuagint. Consequently, using expressions like 'never..at any point in time' flies in the face of all available evidence. --Sineaste (talk) 06:41, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Talmud
I'm not sure of the exact suorce, but theres a story similiar to "bel and the dragon" in the Talmud. might be notable. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.140.123.161 (talk) 16:44, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Cyrus or the King of Babylon?
'Don't have the reference in front of me but I recall reading in Collins' Daniel commentary that Cyrus is not the best reading here. Apparently the most reliable reading is "the king of Babylon". Otherwise this article is surprisingly well written. Future areas for expansion might include the relationship between Bel.. and the book of Daniel, evidence for later Jewish/Christian use of the additions to Daniel, and explorations of the theology, setting, and literary structure/development of these stories. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sineaste (talk • contribs) 02:56, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Hebrew Bible?
Is it appropriate to put Bel and the Dragon in the series on the Hebrew Bible? TomS TDotO (talk) 14:05, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
 * No - in biblical scholarship, "Hebrew bible" is the same thing as Masoretic text - it's the bible written in Hebrew, and until the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls the only known Hebrew text was the Masoretic one. (Not quite true - the Samaritan text is also in Hebrew and had been known since the 1600s). Opposed to the Hebrew bible was the Greek bible, better known as the Septuagint text - a translation from Hebrew, but significantly different in some places. Up until the DSS were discovered the oldest Greek texts were significantly older than the oldest Hebrew texts - the oldest Greek mss date from the 4th century (Alexandria codex and Vaticanus codex), the Hebrew ones from the 10th (Leningrad codex and Aleppo codex). Bel&Dragon is found in Greek mss, but not in Hebrew ones, so it's not accurate to put it under "Hebrew bible". This article could benefit from a section on the textual hiustory of B&D - a mention of Theodotion wouldn't go astray. (See Authorship of the Bible for some sourcdes - although some of the source-links in that article don't work very well). PiCo (talk) 22:30, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I was about to delete the reference to the series on the Hebrew Bible, when I took a look at what is included in that series. I was amazed to see the long list of books not included in the Tanakh. (It looks like "Hebrew Bible" is some sort of euphemism for "Old Testament".) With that knowledge, I cannot bring myself to tamper with that, and I want to bring that to the attention of anyone who is thinking of it. TomS TDotO (talk) 12:29, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Link given in References
The link to Daniel 14 goes to a dead page. The place it now needs to link to is http://www.usccb.org/bible/daniel/14:19 The present link uses Wikipedia syntax I don't understand so I haven't messed with it. Would some kind soul fix the link, please? Dinoceras (talk) 13:11, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

1611 KJV
The article mentions Daniel 13 and 14 being in the 1611 King James bible; a scan of that edition online at http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Daniel-Chapter-12_Original-1611-KJV/ seems to have Chapter 12 go right to the book of Hosea on the same page. Jason Townsend (talk) 13:36, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

The reference to the KJV and the 39 articles in the context of a discussion of canonicity is misleading. I am going to delete those references to remove the suggestion that either the original 1611 KJV or the 39 articles regarded Bel and the dragon as canonical.Ocyril (talk) 16:51, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

"first or second trip"
I don't understand this sentence:
 * The third narrative (14:31–42), Daniel in the Lions' Den, is apparently Daniel's first or second trip.

It seems to presuppose that there is an ordered list of trips, and place the lions'-den event as first or second in that list. But there is no other reference to trips in the article. Trips to/from where? What were the other trips? jnestorius(talk) 17:25, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

Canonical vs Deuterocanonical vs Apocryphal
Deutorcanonical books are not per se protocanonical, that is belonging to the Hebrew Bible. In other words, deuterocanonical books (as the name implies) are a 'second order' occupying some tier between canonical and noncanonical. Their authority is not universally accepted by all Christians or denominations, and can be seen as post-Hebraic Christian writings extended from original Jewish scriptural tradition. Some are labeled 'apocrypha' in some Protestant traditions (esp. Lutheran, Anglican and Episcopal), and left entirely out of many others, often referred to by their theologians as 'intertestamental' writings. Anglican tradition notably includes in its lectionary 'Let us praise now famous men' from Wisdom, read on All Saints. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Blue Shift (talk • contribs) 12:54, 11 April 2018 (UTC)